Tuesday, 17 May 2016

How To Dress Well's post-Kantian R&B

Originally published at ABC Arts Online, January 2015

Tom Krell, the man behind the How To Dress
Well moniker, wears a plain white t-shirt to perform in at all his shows. The
ensemble is invariably completed by dark tracksuit bottoms. Thin, fairly
handsome and hardly flamboyant, Krell's personal style seems to define the
spurious 'normcore' fashion categorisation of recent times.

Despite this casualness, each How To Dress
Well concert is an event, an absorbing, atmospheric experience that may often
be simply choreographed, yet offers something gently mesmerising. Krell
carefully marries mood with his music, which can be described as a neo-soul-influenced,
rhythmic and melodic take on sublime existential despair, that on first few
listens may seem to dwell firmly in the realm of pop, yet with immersion
becomes something more expansive and eclectic. On stage, there are shadows,
projections, candles and two microphones. Krell alternates between them, one
being 'clean', the other drenched in the reverb that frequently appears on his
three magnificent albums, the latest of which is 2014's "What Is This Heart?"

These projections play a major role in
making Krell's performances so interesting, and recently this aspect has been
developed by a unique collaboration between Krell and multimedia artist Melissa
Matos. Among the innovations is the fact that the projections, which are
generally abstract, are 'controlled' by Krell's movements on stage. Matos's
projections, manipulated by the artist live, react to and anticipate the
singer's actions. Matos told Spin,
for whose Connect Sessions the partnership initially served, "We're taking
these textures and making them really interactive, a lot of his silhouette
following him around as he moves. So Tom is really able to control what happens
- depending on his different actions, he will trigger reactions on the
screen."

Krell added, "If I'm doing a gesture,
she tries to anticipate it with something visual… The visuals react to my
gestures. So she's playing off the energy of the live set with the visuals and
the actual visual aspect is playing off of my energy and gestures."

It remains to be seen whether Krell's
Australian shows will incorporate such complexities, yet audiences can be sure
of a performance that is genuinely unique in the contemporary world of pop;
Krell rounds things out with some impish banter between songs that acts as a
balance to their somewhat bleak nature.

Thirty-year-old Krell, who grew up in
Denver and now lives in Chicago, released his first album, the well-received Love Remains, in 2010. But it was his
2011 release Total Loss that saw him
define his artistic identity and explore what is a fairly unusual sound, yet
one that paradoxically is heavily informed by mainstream nineties R&B. (He
includes songs by Whitney Houston in his live sets, and previously 'I Wish' by
R. Kelly, until allegations of Kelly's sex crimes resurfaced, rendering Krell's
interpretation inappropriate). Total Loss
also took its toll on its maker, with much of it inspired by the deaths of a
close friend and a family member.

Then in 2014 he produced arguably his most
satisfying record yet in "What Is
This Heart?", another personal collection of songs that deals with his
family, grief and existential disorientation. His vocals, higher in the mix
than previously and frequently falsetto, emerge as the most poignant mode of
expression, with the album largely transcending the R&B template with which
he is associated.

Another aspect of his life that tends to
follow this media-shy artist around is his doctoral study in philosophy. Krell
has been reluctant to draw links between his academic research, which is apparently
of the "post-Kantian" variety, and his music. Like other successful
academics in pop, such as Dan Snaith of Caribou, the two passions do not inform
each other, although he admits some overlapping is inevitable. He told The
Quietus, "The ways in which they overlap would take a long time for me
to explain, because it's not intuitive to say there's a common thread between
this experimental R&B stuff and developments in 19th century logic, but I'm
attracted to all the things I do for common reasons, which I can see
personally."

Up until the slightly more positive "What Is This Heart?", the
personal philosophy and worldview expressed in Krell's music was one of
heartrending despair. Even on his latest, widely regarded as his most
life-affirming, there are lines such as "There’s no design, no god, just
the future in my mother’s broken heart" on '2 Years On (Shame Dream)',
while on Total Loss personal
heartbreak is married with a wider social nihilism. This is exacerbated when he
says
things in interviews like, "It's really hard to find an image of the
world worth affirming. If you go on the news or if you do research in almost
any field, you realize the world is a terrible place. I always think of this
Wallace Stevens quote where he says, 'The world is ugly and the people are
sad.' And I think that's at least 98 percent right."

Krell's mission as a musician, however,
appears to be to complicate and blur this sadness – a Schopenhauer-by-way-of-Boyz
II Men, he is not. Therefore, his dark musings are set against imaginative and colourful
production that lurches between Justin Timberlake, Kanye West and even
contemporary classical minimalism, and he is so sprightly and good-natured on
stage. There is an energy, and a penetrating originality to How To Dress Well,
suggesting that joy can be found in music, at least. This extends to his
songwriting too – Krell's lyrics are generally arrived at through improvising
or freestyling, something he also experiments with when performing, be it
musically or with his visuals. The two percent of happiness he refers to can
perhaps be found through creativity.

The other mitigating factor regarding the
misery found in Krell's songs is the fact he refutes any notion of his music
being directly autobiographical. He told Flavorwire,
"I hope people don’t think that my music is autobiographical in the sense
of, for example, the guy at a coffee shop with an acoustic guitar strumming and
telling his life story. I’ve never pretended to wear that mask, and I think
that as much as my music is confessional, it’s kind of obliquely confessional.
It’s not really about getting to know me."

Such ambiguity makes for a deeply
mysterious and alluring proposition, and for some the most fascinating artist
on the music bill at this year's Sydney Festival. His show will be, both
literally and metaphorically, shreds of light piercing a pervasive darkness.

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Hello, I am a northern NSW-based music and arts journalist. This blog is meant to supplement and complement my website, at www.barnaby-smith.moonfruit.com, where anyone can discover more. You can send me a message at abm.smith [at] gmail.com